by Zoe Sharp
‘I was aware of it, so it was my call,’ Parker said quietly, before I could answer. ‘Besides, we were already taking maximum precautions. What more could we have done?’ But I heard the nagging worry underscoring his words.
‘And he didn’t give any indication of who – besides Bane – might have wanted him?’ Sean persisted.
‘No.’ But I promised him he’d be safe, that we’d protect him…
Sean said, ‘If it was a snatch, why uncuff him?’
‘And if it was a rescue,’ Parker responded grimly, ‘why kill two men to effect it?’
At the airport, we bypassed normal security checks and were driven almost straight into this nondescript hangar, where Epps disappeared into an inner office without a word, and we were left kicking our heels. Enough of his men lurked nearby to disabuse us of any notion that we were free to leave. They were not what you’d call chatty.
Not a prisoner, exactly… The irony was not altogether lost on me.
Through the open doorway, I watched a small executive Gulfstream jet land and begin to taxi, and idly checked my watch. I thought again of the bloody scene in the parking garage. The kind of power Epps wielded, I knew that by now even the tarnished area of concrete would have been dug out and relaid, leaving no trace of something that never happened in the first place.
Had it been our fault?
Sean leant his head back against the driver’s door of the Suburban and closed his eyes. ‘Next time you take us for a picnic, Parker,’ he said lazily, ‘take us somewhere nice.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘and bring some food.’
That raised a smile which almost made it up to Parker’s eyes.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said at last, tiredly. ‘Epps was pretty damned clear on how he wanted this handled. I had to play it by the book.’
Sean gave an apparently casual shrug. ‘Don’t sweat it,’ he said, eyes still shut. ‘We all have our secrets.’
Parker’s gaze briefly met mine, fell away.
‘Any ideas why we’re being kept hanging around here?’ I asked quickly, flexing my fingers inside their gloves. As the sun disappeared, I reminded myself it was still technically winter. I would have jammed my cooling hands into my pockets, but didn’t want the restriction just in case. The same went for buttoning my jacket.
‘Looks like we might be just about to find out,’ Parker murmured.
We turned to see Epps had left the office and was approaching with that precise military stride. From outside the hangar came the roar of another turboprop going through maximum revs for take-off. The rising growl of the plane’s engines seemed to expand as Epps drew nearer. If I were more fanciful, I could almost have imagined he’d timed his entrance deliberately. He halted a few metres away and waited until the noise had largely abated before he spoke.
‘Well, gentlemen,’ he said, with barely a flicker in my direction. ‘I think you’ll agree that what should have been a clean and simple operation has turned into the mother of all cock-ups.’
‘It doesn’t necessarily follow,’ Parker said with every appearance of bland politeness, ‘that it was our security that was compromised.’
The cold stare Epps levelled in his direction was no less vicious for being short.
‘Security was breached, somewhere along the line,’ Epps said through his teeth. ‘And the source is being ascertained as we speak. Heads will roll, gentlemen, you may be certain of that.’ He left just long enough of a pause for the words to sink in, then hit us with, ‘But right now your primary objective should be reacquiring your target.’
‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘We completed our assignment and handed him over into your…care.’ If Epps noticed the sarcastic emphasis, he gave no sign. ‘Surely, if anyone needs to reacquire him, it’s you.’
His head turned very slowly in my direction. ‘I consider your task incomplete,’ he said with an air of total finality.
One look at Parker’s flattened expression was enough to dissuade me from argument – one I stood little chance of winning.
‘Well, I do not, so if you want us to continue working on this,’ Parker said, matching his tone, ‘you’re going to have to pay the going rate. The man who went into Fourth Day was a schoolteacher. The man who came out was something else again. This was not the job we were briefed to do.’
‘I concur,’ Epps said, surprising all of us. ‘Which is precisely why we are here.’
He nodded towards the huge doorway, just as the Gulfstream G550 I’d seen land earlier swung its nose into view, rolled fully inside the hangar and powered down. The twin-engined corporate jet was sleekly arrogant, with its racehorse-slender body and high tail. As the distinctive whistle of the Rolls-Royce turbofans died away, the door cracked open. I fully expected another macho military type to come bounding down the steps.
Instead, the figure who appeared almost diffidently in the doorway was a slim man with a long mousy ponytail and little round John Lennon glasses, like a throwback from the Sixties. He peered out at the assembled faces as if unsure of his welcome. With the prospect of facing Epps, I couldn’t blame him for that.
He caught sight of the group of us over by the Suburban and raised a faltering hand in greeting.
‘This is Mr Sagar,’ Epps said as the figure came scurrying down the steps, a canvas satchel bumping against his hip. Epps’s voice was dry and devoid of inflection. ‘He is considered something of an expert on cults. That is my understanding?’ he added ominously as Sagar reached us, a little flustered.
‘Er, yeah, sure,’ Sagar said, shaking hands all round. His hands were small for a man, barely bigger than my own, and his grip was brief but firm. He was older close up than I’d first thought, late thirties at least, but his boyish air was compounded by the quick, bright grin he flashed at me. ‘Hi. Call me Chris.’
‘And you reckon he can give us inside information on Fourth Day?’ Sean asked.
Chris Sagar stopped fussing with his bag and straightened, the last of the dying light catching the lenses of his glasses and flashing fire.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Seeing as how I used to be Randall Bane’s second in command.’
CHAPTER TEN
‘The first thing you gotta do is never underestimate the guy,’ Sagar said, perching on the edge of his seat and leaning forwards, eyes flicking earnestly at the expressionless faces in front of him. ‘That’s just fatal. If there’s an angle you can think of, Bane will have thought of it already, planned a way around it, made a backup plan in triplicate.’ He paused, shook his head, hands linked together tightly in his lap. ‘He’s got a mind like a steel trap.’
‘Now you tell us,’ I muttered.
We were on board the Gulfstream, sitting dormant in the hangar. It was the nearest convenient place to hold a conference that had enough seating. Giant soft-leather armchairs that gave alarmingly when you sat on them.
Sean had not come aboard with the rest of us. He’d taken one look at the set-up and announced he’d stay with the Suburban to watch our backs.
Now, Sagar looked surprised, maybe even a little hurt. ‘Hey, I briefed you people weeks, if not months ago.’ As if to prove it, he flipped open the satchel, dragged out a battered red folder and handed it across to me. I opened the file, riffled quickly through a couple of neatly typewritten pages, my eye lighting on key words like weapons training, indoctrination, unarmed combat, mind control, counterinsurgency techniques, before I grew aware of other eyes boring into me, and dutifully passed it over.
Parker picked up the sense of it in a moment and glanced at Epps, sitting impassively opposite. Of the four of us, he was the only one who seemed at ease in his surroundings. Maybe the two guys he had loitering by the jet’s open doorway helped him feel unthreatened. Suddenly, I was grateful we had Sean to watch those watching us.
‘Withholding vital intel jeopardised the safety and security of my team,’ Parker said with lethal calm.
Epps’s gaze sliced across the narrow cabin. ‘It wasn
’t your team who were put in jeopardy, now, was it, Mr Armstrong?’
For a moment the tension hummed between them, was only broken by Sagar clearing his throat. ‘Um…hey, guys?’ he murmured. ‘Look, I don’t know what’s going on here, and to be honest, I don’t want to know. Is this some interdepartmental jurisdiction crap, is that what this is? No, don’t tell me,’ he went on, hastily, lifting his hands as two heads winched in his direction. ‘Forget I asked, OK?’ he added hastily. ‘But – what with you sending this truly outstanding ride to fly me down here from San Francisco, when I would have been happy with a bus ticket – I just kinda assumed you were finally taking my warnings about Fourth Day seriously, and there was some urgency to this deal, y’know?’
For the first time in our brief, arm’s-length acquaintance, Epps hesitated. Only fractional, but so out of character that it struck me clearly, even so. Those cold eyes flickered momentarily over Parker’s shuttered face, then he said, ‘There have been certain developments while you were in flight, Mr Sagar.’
Sagar’s face went from anxiety to consternation and back again. ‘Oh crap,’ he said softly, eyes darting between us. ‘You lost Witney, didn’t you?’ He sat back in his seat, chewing at the side of his thumb and staring out of the oval porthole alongside him as if expecting a view. ‘Goddamn it,’ he said with quiet compression. Then he sighed, made a visible effort to pull himself together, spoke under his breath. ‘Well, that proves it, I guess.’
‘Proves what, Mr Sagar?’ Parker demanded, his patience worn to a thin veneer.
Sagar glanced at Epps as if for permission to speak. I didn’t see the older man so much as twitch, but Sagar must know him better than I did. Sagar nodded, as if Epps had spoken aloud, and said, ‘Look, I joined Fourth Day about a year or so before Bane took over, and I bought into it wholesale.’ He broke off, shook his head again, took a moment to gather himself. ‘I can’t believe I was so gullible, but at the time…’ He shrugged. ‘That’s why I’ve devoted myself to exposing these cults for what they really are, and why I’ve been working with Mr Epps’s people.’
‘So, what exactly is Fourth Day?’ Parker said, voice neutral.
‘It’s all there,’ Sagar said, waving to his dossier. ‘When he first came on the scene, I thought Bane was a saviour – literally. He was promising to change the whole thing around, and I welcomed him, I admit,’ he added, shamefaced. ‘Wasn’t long before I realised all he wanted was a base to recruit and train people. Very specific people. I know, because for a while I was in charge of the evaluation side of the operation, so—’
But I was already remembering Thomas Witney’s uncanny reaction speed. He’d got close to me almost before I knew it – was it only yesterday? I was aware of Parker’s eyes on me, even as I cut across Sagar’s recall.
‘Recruiting how?’ I asked, ignoring Epps’s poisonous glance. ‘And training them for what?’
Sagar shrugged in apology. ‘Look, I never found that out. Bane liked to keep things very…compartmentalised. I guess he felt he had more power that way. If the organisation couldn’t run without him, he had ultimate control over it.’
‘You said Bane was recruiting very specific people,’ Parker said. ‘But Thomas Witney was a schoolteacher before he went in to Fourth Day. What was so special about him?’
‘He had focus,’ Sagar said immediately. ‘He had that kind of driven personality. You might think the strong ones are the most difficult to turn, but they’re not. All Bane had to do was redirect that focus, that drive.’
‘But to what purpose?’
Sagar shrugged helplessly. ‘I don’t know. By the time I was uneasy enough to be asking those kinda questions, Bane was already beginning to shut me out of the loop.’
‘That,’ Epps said, grim, ‘is information we were hoping to persuade Thomas Witney to share with us.’
‘But Bane got to him first,’ Sagar said, looking twitchy. Even more so when Epps rose abruptly, reaching for his inside pocket, but all that came out of it was a silently lit cellphone. Epps checked the incoming number and strode away to the rear of the plane without excusing himself. My mother would have been appalled by his manners.
Sagar’s eyes roved between Parker and me, bright with questions. ‘So, are you guys like…FBI? CIA? Or some Homeland Security Black Ops outfit I don’t wanna know about?’
‘Private sector,’ Parker said. ‘Out of New York.’
Sagar’s eyebrows climbed, then he began to nod. ‘Yeah, that makes sense, I guess. Mr Epps calls you in so he has ultimate deniability, huh?’
‘Let’s just say we’re good at what we do,’ Parker said smoothly, ‘and we owed him a favour.’ To his credit, he managed to not even glance in my direction as he spoke.
‘So, you went into Fourth Day and got Witney out?’ Sagar’s face fell and he added quickly, ‘Um, if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s cool.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We got Witney out.’
‘You, too?’ Sagar said, eyes widening behind those little glasses. ‘I mean, there’s no reason why not, of course, but even so…wow.’ He grinned again. ‘I was never any good at all that kung fu stuff, y’know? I joined Fourth Day thinking that was one thing Bane could give me, but he never did. Man, there were a lot of broken promises.’
He sounded almost wistful for a moment, then the brightness was back in his eyes. ‘How much trouble did you have getting to him? I mean, from what I hear, Bane’s taken on a lotta security recently.’
‘We had it covered,’ Parker said, and while his tone was pleasant, something in it warned Sagar not to push.
‘Yeah,’ he said, sober now, respect in his voice. ‘Yeah, I get that. So, what happened – you handed him over to Epps and Epps lost him, is that it? Is that why he’s so pissed?’
We were saved having to answer that by the man in question snapping his phone shut to end the call and striding back down the plane.
‘Well, Mr Armstrong, it looks as though your services will be required for a time longer,’ he said, stony. ‘My people have just found a short-range tracking device attached to one of the vehicles.’
Parker bristled. ‘If you’re suggesting—’
‘One of our vehicles, Mr Armstrong,’ Epps admitted. He paused, uncertainty an unfamiliar taste in his mouth that was not to his liking. ‘The van being used to transport Mr Witney, in fact.’
I raised my chin and dared to look Epps in the face. ‘And heads are about to roll, are they?’
Something venomous thrashed behind his eyes. ‘They will if Mr Witney is not recovered and debriefed about the exact nature of Fourth Day’s current activities,’ he snapped. ‘If he was taken – willingly or unwillingly – find out who has him, or where he’s hiding, and get him locked down.’ His gaze pinned Sagar to his chair. ‘You will liaise with Mr Armstrong’s people until this assignment is completed, Mr Sagar.’
‘Hey, slow down,’ Sagar protested. ‘You don’t understand! I agreed to compile a profile, that’s all. If Bane knows I’m back, well…’ he swallowed, let his eyes drop away. ‘I don’t wanna disappear, y’know? I was never trained for any rough stuff.’
‘Don’t worry, Mr Sagar,’ Epps said, dismissive. ‘Mr Armstrong’s people are the best available.’ Which might have been intended to reassure the man, but was a double-edged compliment if ever I heard one. ‘You’ll be paid a consultancy fee for your time and expertise.’
Parker rose. In the confines of the aircraft cabin, he and Epps suddenly seemed to be standing very close together. I was struck by their similarities – Epps a taller, heavier, soulless version of Parker. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the men by the plane doorway shift their positions slightly. Automatically, I got to my feet. Epps kept his eyes on Parker, completely without regard to me.
‘Our marker was cancelled out the moment we delivered Witney,’ Parker repeated quietly.
‘Yes, Mr Armstrong, it was,’ Epps said, showing his teeth. ‘But we have a contingency fund for circumstances
such as this, and I’m sure you’ll be happy with the amount on offer. And let’s just say I will view your extended cooperation in a very favourable light for the future.’
Parker allowed himself a cynical smile. ‘Is that as close as you’re going to get to saying, “I owe you one”?’ he asked.
Epps eyed him briefly without response. ‘I trust you’ll provide accommodation for Mr Sagar during his stay,’ he said instead, and glanced pointedly at his watch. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me? I have to go tell two widows about the auto wreck on the two-one-oh this evening, in which their husbands have officially met their deaths.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Thomas Witney’s body turned up the following morning, in a rent-by-the-hour motel room just off West Sunset Boulevard, barely twenty miles from where he disappeared.
Parker took the call and had us ready to move out inside ten minutes. It would have been faster, but Chris Sagar dug his heels in about wanting to tag along.
‘I knew Witney,’ he said simply. ‘And, if I’m right, I know the man who had him killed.’
Parker treated him to a long, unforgiving scrutiny. The kind that normally had tough guys shuffling their feet awkwardly and avoiding eye contact. Sagar stood up to it no better than most.
‘All right,’ Parker said at last. ‘Grab your gear. You’re not in the vehicle when we’re ready to move out, we leave you behind.’
Sagar nodded, grateful.
‘Is that wise?’ I asked quietly, watching him take the winding staircase towards the upper floor at a fast jog, ponytail jinking. ‘Whoever’s responsible for what happened to Witney may well have eyes on the scene, waiting to ID who turns up.’
‘I agree,’ Parker said. ‘But somebody put a tracker on that vehicle, and if Bane is as good as Sagar says, he’ll know who we are anyway. And he’ll know Sagar was flown down from San Francisco in an agency jet. Taking him with us doesn’t give Bane anything he doesn’t have already.’